I watched Mulan this weekend.

Spoiler

1. The cinematography itself swapped between artistic, boring, and disney channel original movie. The scene where Mulan reveals herself amongst the beautiful icy mountain mist is amazing, but nothing else really stood out as amazing to me.
2. I do get that Eddie Murphy Dragon can't translate effectively to live action. But I would've preferred kevin heart in a dragon suit to the 'mystical' elements they added instead.
3. The witch can solo barracks and fortifications, but is beholden to this guy, why? And then he betrays her, and suddenly she can't stand up to him despite threatening to rip him apart at the start.
4. She possesses these guys, but then just leaves. Is she consuming them? They don't pop up again, do they just cease to exist?
5. She can control anyone or BE anyone, or at least all men, why not just be the emperor and legalize some damn gender rights?
6. She can stop swords bare handed, dracula bat some armies, and use her sleeves like tentacles to swing one dude around and knock out another dude with the first dude. Yet, standing 2 feet from someone aiming a bow, she decides to transform into an eagle and fly into the path of the arrow 200ft away. WTF? Why not just bat form that and lose like...a finger?
7. How did Mulan gather the arrows and the helmets and ride around the army and 300yards behind them, set up the helmets, then start firing? They literally killed 2 formations of troops in that time with their SINGLE trebuchet. How did the other 3 survive that long standing still for her to do all that? Why couldn't they just use the same goddamn cannon plot devices from the animated version?
8. How did they mess up so horribly with army size? Like having a SINGLE FUCKING TREBUCHET? Cavalry was like 10 riders, army was like 100 men. The imperial court had more people in it than "all the men from all the city including all the walls and towers" gathered together. Also, Mulan and her merry crew of 8 somehow turned the tide of that battle, because the ambush was them running down the walls to attack the formation of guards standing at attention. Instead of, yknow, firing down at them while they are sitting ducks? This was something that made it feel so much like a disney channel original tv budget movie. It was like LOTR if they forgot to CGI in the other 20,000 troops.
9. They have none of the songs. Mulan had the most slapping hits of any disney movie. Maybe not the BEST song of any disney song, but what other disney movie can compete against Make a Man Out of You, Reflection, Girl Worth Fighting For, and Honor to Us All? You let the animals sing in Lion King and Jungle Book, and add a song for Jasmine instead of Jafar turning into a Snake, but you DON'T have A GIRL WORTH FIGHTING FOR????
10. The ending of the original is so much more powerful. Begging for forgiveness when she still faces certain death for her deceit, only for the emperor to bow to her? Then going home and presenting her father with all of her triumphs, only for him to turn them aside and forgive her? This ending was a flaccid execution of the same ideas, in a worse order, with less tension and lower payoff.
11. Why was my man Jimmy Wong not given more than one line?
12. How did they fight for half an hour in a confined space and somehow continue fighting for that duration of time, yet none of them died? It's like they threw their swords down and started slugging it out, but also agreed to no face shots and just slammed armored fists into armored chests and waited for someone to collapse of boredom.

 

So that new Dune trailer dropped. I know nothing of the franchise but... well... the trailer made it look ver YA-y, am I crazy?

I'll watch it anyway because of the director and Oscar Isaac, but still... it looks kinda meh?

 

I mean, the story at the heart of the first several Dune books IS filled to the brim with YA tropes. It's just written for a mature audience.

Everything I've seen so far suggests that this will basically just be an updated remake of Dune 1984 with better actors, younger leads, and sans inner monologues (thank jesus). Aesthetically, it looks pretty same-y to the OG film, right down to the color pallette and body-hugging jumpsuits.

I have no real problem with the trailer other than the derpy music choice. That said, I don't think going with a two-film format was the right choice. They should have done a big-budget tv show. The Dune saga just works better when you tell it slowly and focus on the cerebral stuff.

 

Apparently some people have huge issues with the kid? The main one sticking his hand in the box thing.

He didn't look particularly like a shitty actor, but they were pretty vociferous about it...

 

I thought it looked like great fun. Worth noting that they split the book into two films, so I have hopes that it'll be a good adaptation.

 

The kid was in a Netflix movie last year, he was perfectly fine.

 

Timothee Chalamet is 24. He was legit in The King. Really enjoyed his acting.

 

Regarding Dune and Paul's age, I'm glad they went with a younger looking lead. In the 1984 movie, the actor playing Paul is actually way too old than what the books portray him as.

If they are staying faithful to the books, then Paul would be around 15 years old. That they consciously went with a younger looking lead actor instead of an older one makes me hopeful that they will continue to try to keep as close to canon as possible.

 

He was nominated for the best supporting actor BAFTA 2 years ago, so I'm not sure what that's about.

 

It's Denis Villeneuve - he's earned my goodwill by now, so I think he can pull it off. Hans Zimmer is the composer, and he's usually pretty good. And there is actually a Dune: The Sisterhood TV series announced, although there's not even anyone cast yet for iet.

 

A lot of you sound like you've never read Dune before... fucking philistines.

The 1984 film, even though it was nice to see it on actual film, sucked balls in a lot of ways. The 2000 Dune TV miniseries was better in my opinion, but still had problems.

The book was far too dense to make into a proper 2 hr movie without losing a lot of the nuance that made the book great in the first place. There are far too many great characters that basically just make 2D cameos and that's all we see of them.

Here's Leto, Duncan, Chani, Gurney, and Thufir, but we're only going to put them on for five minutes, tops. But go ahead and care for them, because they were all very important to the plot... just not important enough to explain why they were important. We don't have a lot of time here, so fans of the book can just pretend that they were on more.

It was one of the reasons I liked the miniseries better than the 1984 movie. Still, it wasn't really enough to tell the proper story. If they made it into an actual series... HBO or whatever, then I think it could be great, but I don't even know if that would be possible.

Still, I liked the trailer to D-2020 (sans the Pink Floyd song), so I'll see it... and then whine afterword, like a proper Dune fan.

 

Honestly, I bounce off Sci-fi written decades ago and I don't know why.

 

I can't usually stand old sci-fi in any form, mostly due to current tech outstripping what they consider advanced tech. I was watching Hackers last month. I'd only seen it once , but remembered it was kinda neat at the time. I watched it a second time and laughed at the utter crap it had become ie. top of the line 286 virtually reality laptops that all you have to do is spray paint it camo and it becomes even more awesome.

But Dune (book) isn't really like that. The movies, yes, god yes. The book, from what I remember, could have been read at any time and it still holds up. I imagine it's one of the reasons that they still keep trying to make more Dune movies, because the source material is malleable enough to insert in any recent timeline.

 

The biggest issue I recall when reading Dune a couple decades after the fact was realizing after the fact just how much influence it's had on the Science Fiction genre. A lot of the things that made it really original in 1965 have ... kind of been copied a lot since then. If you've consumed a decent amount of Sci-Fi, there will be quite a moments of "Oh, that's where that came from!"

 

Like reading "The Power of Time" after 13 years of Indy Harry stories.


Gonna try to see this as a sci-fi movie I can hopefully enjoy first of all, and afterwards evaluate it as an adaptation.

 

I've actually never read dune, so I think i'll wait and watch it as a movie first then read the book after.

 

... why tho?

 

Psyched by the pretty. If I had to choose one book series to take with me into the desert, it'd be Dune. I'd love for Dune to be given the GoT treatment, I'd hate for Dune to be given the GoT treatment.

re: YA tropes, book #1 was always meant to be "high-camp" in Herbert's own words. A set up for peripeteia. It only seems a hero's journey on the surface; subsequent viewings in the rearview mirror unveil a boy (man) trapped at the intersection of great social and political forces. Villeneuve gets it on some level: "Paul Atreides is Michael Corleone."

 

Reading the book first and then being disappointed when the movie inevitably isn't as good as the book kind of sucks. Watching the movie first feels better sometimes when it comes from adapted material. I was thinking about doing that myself but Dune's been on my list for a long while so I'm going to read it first.

 

Dune the book is pretty dated; tons of what is now awkward exposition, asides thrown in to attempt to cover up problems in the plot, and some of it is as dry as the desert itself. It's not a huge issue for me as I grew up on the stuff and one of my favorites literally throws out the first 80% of the book for finisher but it's very different from modern writing